The Ben Shapiro Show - It’s FIGHT NIGHT!

00:00:00.000 It is tonight, the fight for second place in the Republican primaries.

00:00:04.000 Big Republican nomination battle tonight, except that Donald Trump is not on the stage.

00:00:09.000 Is that going to hurt him in any real way?

00:00:11.000 Well, I mean, certainly not going to hurt him in the polls, given the fact that he is currently leading the race by some 40 points over the rest of the field combined.

00:00:19.000 The current polling status right now, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, has Donald Trump at 55%, it has Ron DeSantis at 14%, Vivek Ramaswamy at 7.2%, Mike Pence at 4, Nikki Haley at 3, Tim Scott at 3, Christy at 3, and then everyone else, including the inevitable Doug Burgum.

00:00:36.000 The absolutely unstoppable force that is Doug Burgum at below 1%.

00:00:41.000 So what does this mean?

00:00:42.000 Well, it means that pretty much everybody on the stage tonight is going to be attacking Ron DeSantis.

00:00:47.000 And that includes the Trump campaign.

00:00:49.000 The Trump campaign already today put out A placard, a bingo card for Ron DeSanctimonious and Marjorie Taylor Greene put out this DeSanctimonious debate night bingo.

00:01:03.000 It just shows you who Team Trump fears because really they look at that field and they say there's really only one candidate there who could theoretically threaten Donald Trump.

00:01:10.000 That's true in the early states, by the way.

00:01:12.000 In the current Iowa polling, he is within shouting distance of Donald Trump and it is still very early.

00:01:16.000 Remember, it is still August.

00:01:17.000 The first caucuses are not until January.

00:01:19.000 A lot can happen.

00:01:20.000 A lot does happen on a daily basis in politics.

00:01:22.000 A lot can happen between late August and late January, which is when those first Iowa caucuses are.

00:01:28.000 So Trump is basically trying to take out DeSantis early.

00:01:31.000 He's putting all of his focus on DeSantis, none on any of the other candidates.

00:01:36.000 So Marjorie Taylor Greene put out a bingo card for debate night.

00:01:40.000 It is entirely about DeSantis.

00:01:42.000 It's entirely about DeSantis.

00:01:43.000 And it shows you the nature of the attacks on DeSantis by Team Trump.

00:01:47.000 There's not a single attack on a single Ron DeSantis policy.

00:01:50.000 Not one.

00:01:52.000 Now, as a conservative voter, I find this sort of thing insulting.

00:01:54.000 If you're going to attack other conservatives on stage, you should probably do it over their policies.

00:01:59.000 So if Ron DeSantis were to make a Trump debate night bingo, if Trump were to take part in the debate, it would say things like gave a medal to Anthony Fauci, did not call in the National Guard during mass rioting in 2020, spent $7 trillion his last year in office, right?

00:02:11.000 There's like a bunch of stuff that he could get.

00:02:13.000 The biggest one, of course, would be lost to Joe Biden in 2020, which we'll get to in just a second.

00:02:17.000 But if you look at the bingo card that Trump put out about DeSantis, I understand that a lot of Trump supporters find this sort of thing charming, and they think that this sort of kitchen sink attack tells against Democrats and Republicans.

00:02:30.000 It told against Hillary Clinton because Hillary Clinton was already deeply unpopular with the American people.

00:02:34.000 We'll see if it works.

00:02:35.000 But here is kind of the bingo card.

00:02:37.000 Here are some of the things.

00:02:38.000 First of all, it parrots left-wing lies.

00:02:40.000 It says things like, Ron defends slavery.

00:02:42.000 That is a left-wing lie.

00:02:43.000 Ron DeSantis has never defended slavery.

00:02:45.000 It is just a lie.

00:02:47.000 It says things like, Nervous laugh.

00:02:50.000 Wipes snot.

00:02:52.000 Gaslight COVID record.

00:02:53.000 Okay, he has not gaslit his COVID record.

00:02:55.000 Ron DeSantis had the strongest COVID record of any governor in America.

00:02:59.000 Things like Ron backs down.

00:03:01.000 Saved by Fox News.

00:03:03.000 Dismisses poll.

00:03:04.000 End of the day.

00:03:06.000 Okay, like, the whole thing is just designed to kind of sneer at DeSantis, which is Trump's utter strategy, right?

00:03:11.000 He has a 7th grade strategy when it comes to going after his opponents.

00:03:15.000 By the way, it worked in 7th grade, and it worked in 2016, so there's no reason to think it couldn't work now.

00:03:19.000 He used a very similar strategy with regard to Jeb Bush, he used a very similar strategy with regard to Little Marco, he used a very similar strategy with regard to Lion Ted, right?

00:03:27.000 So, him doing it to run DeSantis is not exactly a shock, but it shows you where Trump's focus is.

00:03:33.000 Trump's the frontrunner.

00:03:34.000 This battle still, believe it or not, is a two-man race, even though DeSantis' campaign has not caught fire in any way, shape, or form as of yet.

00:03:41.000 Well, the debate tonight is going to be odd because Trump is not on stage, which means, as we say, someone else is going to try to take down DeSantis and try to supplant DeSantis as the other possibility in the Republican primaries.

00:03:53.000 Because again, 45% of the vote is still up for grabs, even at least, at least, right?

00:03:57.000 And it's early.

00:03:58.000 So theoretically, it could be above 50.

00:04:01.000 The debate stage is filled with people who should not be on the debate stage.

00:04:04.000 That includes people, again, including Asa Hutchinson.

00:04:08.000 The way that Hutchinson got on the stage, no one cares about Asa Hutchinson.

00:04:11.000 Donald Trump is certainly right about that when he says, Ada Hutchinson.

00:04:15.000 That's true.

00:04:17.000 Asa Hutchinson has no place on the debate stage.

00:04:19.000 He is polling below cancer right now in the Republican primaries,

00:04:22.000 but he was able to qualify for the debate by essentially going to people

00:04:28.000 and asking them to work around the rules because one of the requirements of getting on stage

00:04:37.000 is that you have to have 40,000 donors.

00:04:39.000 So what did he do?

00:04:40.000 Well, he got hundreds of college students to donate $1 and then they were given $20 a pop

00:04:46.000 for every family member, friend, or acquaintance could persuade to donate one dollar to Hutchinson and the

00:04:50.000 Summers.

00:04:50.000 So he got a bunch of big donors to give him some money, and then he took that money and he plowed it into giving it away to people to donate back to him $1.

00:04:56.000 So he could get to that $40,000 mark.

00:04:59.000 There were other campaigns that did something similar.

00:05:02.000 This is ridiculous.

00:05:03.000 Okay, again, the people on the debate stage The truth is that there are approximately six serious people on the debate stage.

00:05:12.000 Maybe?

00:05:14.000 Maybe?

00:05:14.000 It's really more like five.

00:05:16.000 And that debate stage is filled with no-names who should not be on the stage.

00:05:21.000 I mean, Doug Burgum on the stage is like, give me a break.

00:05:25.000 We'll get some more on this in just one second.

00:05:27.000 First, gotta tell you, my sleep quality, it sucked last night.

00:05:30.000 Why?

00:05:30.000 Well, it's because my little baby, unfortunately, has some congestion again, which means that he was up between the hours of three and five, which was a good time for both me and my wife.

00:05:38.000 But what did it mean?

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00:06:32.000 Okay, so what exactly do the candidates on stage have to do?

00:06:38.000 Well, so we're going to go through each candidate and we are going to establish their goals for tonight.

00:06:42.000 Now, as I say, the entire debate is going to be about attacking DeSantis.

00:06:47.000 Which means that basically Ron DeSantis' first kind of task here is survive.

00:06:53.000 He has to make sure that he is not the person who is the subject of all the headlines tomorrow for all the attacks against him.

00:07:02.000 I mean, as we are seeing in the polling data, DeSantis has been experiencing a rather marked decline in the polling data.

00:07:08.000 So I said a few weeks ago that he was basically stagnant since June.

00:07:11.000 But the reality is that in that RealClearPolitics polling average, he has lost momentum.

00:07:15.000 If you look at that Republican nomination RealClearPolitics polling average, it shows that in April, he was at 24%.

00:07:22.000 He basically maintained that all the way through June.

00:07:24.000 And then since June, he's dropped in the RealClearPolitics polling average from about 24% all the way down to about 14%, which is a significant drop.

00:07:31.000 By the way, that support largely went to Donald Trump.

00:07:34.000 Some of it went to other candidates, a lot of it went to Donald Trump.

00:07:37.000 Which means that he has to do a couple of things.

00:07:39.000 He has to fend off all the people who are going to be attacking him tonight, trying to kind of finish his campaign, and he has to regain his mojo.

00:07:45.000 The only way to do that, truly, is that he has to make the case that Republicans have failed to make, which is why Donald Trump is leading in the polling by leaps and bounds.

00:07:53.000 He has to make the case that he should be the nominee and not Trump.

00:07:55.000 Okay, not Trump is part of that case.

00:07:58.000 The notion that you could kind of sit aside and say, I should be the nominee and never discuss Trump, that's obviously not the case.

00:08:03.000 Trump is cruising right now.

00:08:04.000 So somebody's going to have to make the case as to why it shouldn't be Trump.

00:08:07.000 It seems there are really only two attack lines as to why it shouldn't be Trump.

00:08:11.000 Attack line number one is that Trump was not as great a president as people want him to have been.

00:08:17.000 Trump did a lot of good things that we like.

00:08:19.000 He appointed good conservative justices.

00:08:21.000 Race showed me I didn't think he was going to do that, and he did that, which is certainly true.

00:08:24.000 He moved the embassy to Jerusalem.

00:08:26.000 He created peace deals in the Middle East.

00:08:28.000 He had a booming economy, but he also did not build the border wall despite all of his promises to do so.

00:08:34.000 He did not do anything about the mass rioting in America's major cities throughout 2020.

00:08:38.000 He empowered Anthony Fauci to basically run his COVID policy and put out a completely confused and discombobulated policy with regard to COVID in which he was both ripping Brian Kemp for reopening Georgia and then ripping states like Michigan for not reopening.

00:08:52.000 Donald Trump spent more money in the last years of his administration than any president in history by leaps and bounds.

00:08:58.000 All of those things would be the case that you could make against Trump if you say, I'll be a better president than Trump will be.

00:09:02.000 The problem is that's having really no impact on the Republican voting base.

00:09:06.000 The Republican voting base in the primaries seems not to care very much about what people do.

00:09:11.000 It cares much more about what people say, and even more importantly, about the attitudinal orientation toward the left.

00:09:17.000 So whoever is seen as sort of the most provocative, the person who's seen as the hardest puncher is the person the Republican base wants.

00:09:23.000 And the Republican base seems to equate saying things with doing things, which is why you're seeing Vivek rise and DeSantis decline.

00:09:29.000 DeSantis has done all the things that Vivek talks about doing in Florida, but it doesn't seem like that's having like a market impact on the race in favor of DeSantis.

00:09:36.000 DeSantis will pass a bill Fighting woke in the state of Florida.

00:09:40.000 Vivek will write a book about fighting woke.

00:09:42.000 And the base treats those two things as exactly equivalent.

00:09:44.000 So, kind of point number one, which is, I should be the guy and not Trump because Trump underperformed as president, particularly in his last year.

00:09:50.000 The Republican base doesn't seem to want that one.

00:09:52.000 Which leaves you with the electability argument.

00:09:55.000 Now the electability argument, under normal circumstances for DeSantis, would be a pretty easy argument.

00:10:00.000 After all, if you look at Ron DeSantis's electability numbers, that dude won the state of Florida, which used to be a purple state, by 20 points.

00:10:07.000 If you take a look at Florida voters' registration, in December of 2018, Democrats had a voter registration edge of 257,000.

00:10:15.000 By August of 2023, the Republicans had a voter registration edge in the state of Florida by 568,000.

00:10:20.000 That is an 822,000 voter registration swing.

00:10:26.000 That's a massive, massive shift created by DeSantis and by the Republican Party of Florida.

00:10:31.000 And so you could look at that, and then you could look at Trump, and you could say, listen, Trump does not poll well.

00:10:37.000 He's polling at best at even with Joe Biden.

00:10:40.000 That is not a great number, considering that Joe Biden is a very unpopular president.

00:10:44.000 I'm not blowing Biden out of the water, but that's because nobody knows my name yet.

00:10:46.000 I haven't actually run a general election campaign yet.

00:10:48.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:10:49.000 In order for DeSantis to make this case, he has to say the thing that many Republicans have feared to say.

00:10:54.000 Because Trump has been lying since November of 2020, when he said that he actually won the election.

00:11:00.000 He did not actually win the election.

00:11:02.000 There is no metric by which he actually won the election.

00:11:05.000 In fact, DeSantis could theoretically make a two-part case.

00:11:07.000 One, I won my governor's race by 20 points.

00:11:11.000 Donald Trump, we don't know whether I would beat Joe Biden.

00:11:14.000 What we do know is that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.

00:11:17.000 He'd actually have to say that because there's no other way around this.

00:11:19.000 I mean, that's just the reality.

00:11:20.000 If you don't want Trump to be the nominee, you can't say that he beat Biden already.

00:11:24.000 If you say that he beat Biden already, then why wouldn't you nominate Donald Trump on the electability argument?

00:11:27.000 The electability argument has zero legs unless you make the case that Trump is not electable and that we have proof that he's not electable because not only did he underperform in 2018 with congressional candidates, but he actively lost to the man who's currently running for president on the other side in 2020.

00:11:42.000 And you can point out all of the flaws in the election, all the voting procedures, all the mailing, all that stuff is true.

00:11:47.000 But Donald Trump did lose to Joe Biden in 2020.

00:11:50.000 Do you want to rerun that race?

00:11:52.000 Furthermore, if you believe, as Donald Trump says, that he was jobbed out of it, Donald Trump has provided no plan to actually win in 2024.

00:12:00.000 So if he says the election was stolen, even if you grant that, what is his plan to unsteal the election of 2024?

00:12:05.000 He was president in 2020.

00:12:05.000 He ain't president now.

00:12:08.000 Which means he has no control over the levers of power, so much so that he's being currently indicted in four separate jurisdictions.

00:12:14.000 That's the case that DeSantis could make.

00:12:15.000 Now, is that going to be a case that the Republican Party base is going to take up?

00:12:20.000 Well, if it's not, then DeSantis has no shot.

00:12:23.000 And no one else does either.

00:12:24.000 If the Republican Party base believes that Donald Trump clearly and convincingly won in 2020, the electability argument does not exist.

00:12:31.000 And as far as the, I'd be a better president than Trump, the Republican Party base ain't buying that one either.

00:12:36.000 So then there's no argument against Trump.

00:12:38.000 So DeSantis is going to have to make at least that latter case that he is more electable than Donald Trump.

00:12:44.000 The big obstacle tonight for DeSantis is that DeSantis does not have a history of being amazing at debate.

00:12:50.000 He's actually pretty good one-on-one with members of the media when he gets combative.

00:12:54.000 But in his debates with Andrew Gillum, he wasn't like a stellar debater by any stretch of the imagination here in the state of Florida.

00:13:02.000 The rap on DeSantis, and you can see Team Trump, I will say this about Trump, you know, the seventh grade insults, he's very good at them, but It's not just that he's good at them.

00:13:10.000 Have you ever argued with a seventh grader?

00:13:11.000 They have, like, extraordinary ability.

00:13:13.000 They have, like, an X-Men-like ability to target your weakest and most vulnerable spot and then say it.

00:13:19.000 This is the thing that they always do, right?

00:13:21.000 They pick, like, the thing about you.

00:13:23.000 Oh, you have a bald spot.

00:13:24.000 Oh, you have a little bit of fat around your belt.

00:13:26.000 Like, things that are irrefutable, irrelevant, and stupid, but irrefutable.

00:13:30.000 The media are picking up on this.

00:13:32.000 So the rap on DeSantis tonight is gonna be, no personality, which is Trump's rap on him.

00:13:37.000 Are you sweaty?

00:13:38.000 Eating pudding with his fingers and all the rest of it?

00:13:40.000 This is Mika Brzezinski's thing.

00:13:41.000 Now, I should point out here, the media have a heavy rooting interest in Donald Trump.

00:13:45.000 And so tonight, the media coverage, almost regardless of what happens, is going to be about how terrible DeSantis was.

00:13:50.000 That's just the prediction, right now.

00:13:52.000 But here's Mika Brzezinski laying out their personality-laden case against DeSantis.

00:13:58.000 I mean, he's gonna have to, I don't know, between now and tomorrow night, get a personality.

00:14:02.000 I'm serious.

00:14:03.000 Well, I mean, you know, there's a lot to be said about... I'm not joking at all.

00:14:06.000 ...blocking and tackling.

00:14:07.000 I would say... He's kind of rude.

00:14:08.000 I'd say actually talk about issues that actually matter to mainstream Republicans.

00:14:13.000 Be kind?

00:14:14.000 Yeah.

00:14:14.000 Try not to... Try not to yell at people and be rude.

00:14:17.000 Try not to focus on these really, really, really wedge issues in the state of Florida that don't mean anything to the rest of the country.

00:14:27.000 Again, like this kind of stuff from Mika Brzezinski, she doesn't care about any of that.

00:14:31.000 What the media have an interest in doing right now is ensuring that Trump is the nominee, as we'll discuss in just one second.

00:14:35.000 There is a reason every major journalist is being wooed and dined by Team Trump in Wisconsin before this debate.

00:14:42.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.

00:14:44.000 A majority of Gen Z supports wild left-wing policies like open borders and socialism.

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00:15:49.000 Okay, so.

00:15:51.000 Let's take a look at some of the other candidates in the race.

00:15:54.000 So some of the other candidates in the race include Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:15:57.000 So Vivek has made what they would call a dramatic polling rise.

00:16:00.000 A dramatic polling rise, in the case of everybody who is not Trump, involves moving from basically 0% to approximately 7%, which is movement for Vivek, no question.

00:16:09.000 Now, Vivek is going to be an attack dog on the stage because he really has nothing to lose.

00:16:14.000 Trump is leaving him absolutely alone.

00:16:16.000 Trump does not care about Ramaswamy.

00:16:18.000 Trump is perfectly happy to see Ramaswamy rise.

00:16:19.000 He knows that Ramaswamy is not only not a threat to him, he refuses to cross him.

00:16:23.000 There's a pretty good video going around yesterday showing how Vivek has changed his position multiple times on whether Trump should debate.

00:16:28.000 It went from, Trump is definitely going to debate because he's brave, to, well, Trump should debate, to, well, I don't care if Trump debates.

00:16:34.000 Pretty quickly.

00:16:35.000 Now, this is going to be the wrap on Vivek, right?

00:16:38.000 Vivek's incoming.

00:16:39.000 He has two tasks.

00:16:41.000 His task tonight is to allow DeSantis to be the target.

00:16:44.000 So he's not the target.

00:16:46.000 And really, again, he has nothing to lose because he's not a politician.

00:16:48.000 It's not like he has a political office to defend.

00:16:50.000 It's not as though he is running a simultaneous race.

00:16:54.000 It's not as though he's expected to even be in the race at this point.

00:16:57.000 Vivek is having the most fun of anybody on the campaign trail.

00:16:59.000 I mean, the dude's releasing, like, shirtless videos of himself playing tennis and saying this is his debate prep and all the rest.

00:17:04.000 The rap that he's going to take tonight is that he switched his positions a lot.

00:17:07.000 And then he goes on the media and then he denies that he ever took that position.

00:17:10.000 There's something Brett Baier was pointing out last night.

00:17:12.000 Here's Brett Baier on Fox News talking about Ramaswamy denying something that he pretty clearly said.

00:17:17.000 And one of the things that I'm going to do as the next president of the United States is restore truth in government.

00:17:24.000 So first time candidate, political outsider, and now he has climbed in the polls a bit and he's taken a lot of incoming.

00:17:31.000 Yeah, and his message, and he's come back to it again and again, is that we can handle the truth.

00:17:37.000 The government should be more truthful for us, with us.

00:17:40.000 I think in some of these interviews he got caught up, and the 9-11 detour, he explained it today, but, you know.

00:17:48.000 He said that wasn't the quote that he said and then you played the quote from Atlantic.

00:17:53.000 I think that he's very smooth.

00:17:56.000 We'll see how that translates on stage and interacting with other candidates who may be trying to go after him as he climbs in the polls.

00:18:05.000 Right, that's gonna be the incoming for Vivek.

00:18:07.000 It's gonna be his inconsistency, his switching of positions, and all the rest.

00:18:10.000 But all he really has to do is survive and hope that DeSantis takes on the incoming.

00:18:14.000 Meanwhile, the pure aggression machine on the stage is Chris Christie.

00:18:17.000 And Chris Christie, right now, is pulling shockingly well in New Hampshire.

00:18:21.000 The latest poll from Emerson has him in second place in New Hampshire at 14%.

00:18:24.000 He doesn't really bear any chances in Iowa, but if he can compete in New Hampshire, his hope is that that will knock down Trump.

00:18:30.000 So maybe somebody else wins Iowa, he wins New Hampshire, and then by the time you get to South Carolina, maybe it's a more open race.

00:18:36.000 Now, I don't think that's the way this race shapes up.

00:18:39.000 I think that unless one candidate wins both Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump wipes clean the table.

00:18:44.000 Come South Carolina and the rest of the race.

00:18:46.000 So if there's a split between Iowa and New Hampshire, then basically this thing looks like it goes the way that 2016 did, when Cruz won Iowa, Trump won New Hampshire, but not by like leaps and bounds and then he wiped the floor with everybody else.

00:18:58.000 I think that you'll see something like that.

00:19:00.000 Christie has a history of just being basically a suicide bomber on the stage.

00:19:04.000 He did it to Marco Rubio.

00:19:06.000 He'll be the one who says the meanest things, he'll be the one who says the meanest things about Trump.

00:19:10.000 Now, that will give both Trump, that'll both give DeSantis and Vivek

00:19:16.000 the ability to go after Christie.

00:19:18.000 Christie will take incoming on the basis that he's the dude who was hugging Obama,

00:19:21.000 that he was the guy who was basically fetching water for Donald Trump up until the point

00:19:26.000 where he decided that he didn't like Donald Trump anymore, that he's a person who's willing to do anything

00:19:29.000 and say anything in order to get his time on MSNBC and all the rest.

00:19:32.000 So he'll be taking some incoming as well.

00:19:35.000 This leaves two other candidates on the stage, Both of whom are well qualified and polling at near nothing.

00:19:40.000 They're both polling at three.

00:19:42.000 There's three other candidates.

00:19:43.000 There's Pence, who has no shot at the nomination because the Republican base does not like Pence because Trump decided that Pence was a traitor for no apparent reason.

00:19:51.000 Because he was fibbing about Pence's ability to overthrow the election.

00:19:54.000 Pence will be on the stage.

00:19:56.000 He'll be taking the sort of classier Christie position, which is Donald Trump shouldn't be president because of his positions on the election and because of the things that he has said.

00:20:04.000 It's not going to be particularly popular, but I also think that Pence is not going to be the one taking incoming.

00:20:09.000 Haley and Scott are the other two on the stage.

00:20:10.000 We'll get to Haley and Scott in just one second.

00:20:13.000 First, Let's talk about your employees.

00:20:16.000 So, we have an employee here.

00:20:18.000 Let's call him Jonesy.

00:20:19.000 And he's in my ear pretty much every morning, telling me that the clips are ready, everything's great.

00:20:25.000 And yet, and I speak to him literally every morning, and yet every time I go up to Nashville, he introduces himself to me as though I have never met him and have no idea who he is.

00:20:33.000 The first time, it was kind of charming.

00:20:35.000 The 11th time, I started to wonder if Jonesy had some form of short-term memory loss.

00:20:40.000 Well, if you're wondering if your employees have short-term memory loss and maybe you need to upgrade, this is why you should check out ZipRecruiter.

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00:21:23.000 The last two candidates on the stage are Haley and Scott.

00:21:26.000 I'm not speaking about Pence very much here because I don't think that Pence really has a role on stage except to make the former case that DeSantis can't make, which is that Trump shouldn't be president of the United States because of his moral shortcomings.

00:21:37.000 Again, that one is not going to be popular with the Republican base at all, which means that Pence is theoretically going to take incoming from people who are defending Trump on the stage.

00:21:46.000 Now listen, you're not gonna make a lot of headway with the Trump base by defending Trump on the stage.

00:21:52.000 It's a great thing for Vivek to do.

00:21:53.000 Vivek can do that if he's running for vice president or something.

00:21:56.000 Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are both on the stage.

00:21:58.000 Both of them are basically stuck in their lane.

00:22:01.000 So Nikki Haley is stuck in the traditional Republican lane.

00:22:05.000 That traditional Republican lane is basically fragmenting in a large number of ways.

00:22:11.000 It's being broken up between Scott and Pence and Haley and some DeSantis, a little bit of Chris Christie.

00:22:16.000 And that is why she's currently polling in the 3% range.

00:22:19.000 The reality is that the case that Haley and Scott need to make is going to be a case against DeSantis.

00:22:24.000 Because for Haley and Scott, if they bumper car each other, and if they bumper car DeSantis, Trump's the nominee.

00:22:31.000 So right now, the field is not consolidating.

00:22:33.000 If the field stays not consolidated, Trump walks with 35% of the vote.

00:22:37.000 So the case that Haley and Scott are going to need to make is why they should be on the stage and the other one should not.

00:22:41.000 So I would be surprised to see Nikki Haley and Tim Scott go at it a little bit tonight in this particular debate.

00:22:46.000 Meanwhile, Trump is just avoiding the whole thing, which, as I say, he should debate just on principle, but Is it a smart thing to avoid?

00:22:53.000 Sure, why not?

00:22:53.000 I mean, he's leading by 40 points.

00:22:54.000 He's also whining and dining all the journalists.

00:22:57.000 So again, one of the great lies about the Trump era is that the media and Trump were in a complete hate-hate relationship.

00:23:05.000 It is not true.

00:23:05.000 It's a love-hate relationship.

00:23:06.000 So yes, the media hate Trump.

00:23:08.000 Trump hates the media also.

00:23:10.000 Every so often they have a passionate fling.

00:23:12.000 Those passionate flings tend to happen directly around election time.

00:23:15.000 In the Republican primaries.

00:23:16.000 Not in the general.

00:23:17.000 In the primaries.

00:23:18.000 That's about the time the media fall back in love with covering Trump because he's ratings.

00:23:22.000 The dude is ratings gold.

00:23:23.000 He knows he's ratings gold.

00:23:24.000 They know he's ratings gold.

00:23:26.000 Which is why...

00:23:27.000 According to Politico, Team Trump is whining and dining a number of top reporters at a steakhouse called Rare and passing out pudding snack packs.

00:23:34.000 Again, this is like the Pureisle attacks on DeSantis based on an unsubstantiated story about DeSantis once eating pudding with his fingers or something.

00:23:43.000 Who was there?

00:23:44.000 Here's a list of the reporters who were there.

00:23:46.000 You ready?

00:23:47.000 Dana Bash, Shane Goldmacher, Kristen Welker, Bob Costa, Finn Gomez, Dasha Burns, Rachel Scott, Rick Klein, Josh Dowsey, Rob Crilley, Mario Parker, and David Chalayan.

00:23:57.000 Along with a bunch of campaign surrogates like Chris Levita, Lassa Vita, and Jason Miller.

00:24:03.000 So, yeah, you can see Team Trump whining and diding the same media that they say are the enemy.

00:24:09.000 Pretty obvious what's happening right now.

00:24:11.000 Also, they're still attempting to get their surrogates into the spin room so that they can just crap all over the candidates despite the fact that their candidate didn't even show up.

00:24:17.000 Kimberly Guilfoyle, who is the paramour of Donald Trump Jr., Unless she is going to show up and she says, let them try to stop me from coming to the debate.

00:24:26.000 Well, I mean, she can come to the debate, but whether she is let into the spin room is really up to Fox News channel.

00:24:31.000 We'll see how Fox News runs this debate with regard to Trump.

00:24:34.000 It'll be kind of fascinating to watch those dynamics.

00:24:36.000 In fact, so Fox News actually sent out, believe it or not, a debate guide for the media to cover this thing.

00:24:44.000 They're out of their minds.

00:24:45.000 I got to point this out.

00:24:46.000 Okay, so here is what they say.

00:24:48.000 This is nuts.

00:24:50.000 They say that during the seven day period described during the time below, meaning seven days from the date of the debate and on, no media outlet can air more than a total of three minutes of excerpts from the debate in any one program including video and audio.

00:25:08.000 They're out of their minds.

00:25:09.000 That's totally crazy.

00:25:10.000 They're treating this like a football game or like a baseball game, which is nuts.

00:25:14.000 OK, that's nuts.

00:25:14.000 This is newsworthy material involving the presidential candidates, the people who are going to represent you at the top levels of American government.

00:25:21.000 And Fox News is saying that you're not allowed to hear from them unless you watch the debate live or unless you're watching Fox News.

00:25:27.000 That's totally crazy.

00:25:28.000 That's totally crazy.

00:25:29.000 It means that when people like me recap the debate and explain to you what happened in the debate last night, Fox News is now threatening to sue people like me if I play you four minutes of the debate tomorrow, despite the fact that my show would bring them an extraordinary number of people who are viewers and listeners to them to take a look at their next debate.

00:25:51.000 Like, how the hell is anybody supposed to actually figure out what happened in the debate unless they watched the thing live?

00:25:55.000 I understand they're now trying to telescope all viewership on Fox News to the debate itself, but good luck with this.

00:25:59.000 I mean, just, really.

00:26:00.000 Ridiculous, ridiculous stuff.

00:26:03.000 They say that you can only use the debate or excerpts thereof on the internet by way of the embed video function at foxnews.com video.

00:26:10.000 So, um, this is, that's totally wild stuff.

00:26:15.000 Between the RNC's handling of this debate and Fox News' handling of this debate, I gotta tell ya, I'm just... I'm dumbfounded.

00:26:22.000 You wish to actively...

00:26:25.000 Let people know that your debate is important and you're doing so by blacking it out, essentially, from any place that is not Fox News Live.

00:26:32.000 That is a wild thing to do.

00:26:35.000 Truly wild.

00:26:36.000 What Fox is doing right now actually helps Trump and it helps Tucker, ironically, because by restricting the ability of other people to engage with the newsmaking that they are doing in this debate, this gives a leg up to Trump and Tucker who are putting all their stuff out for free on X.

00:26:50.000 All this stuff is now available to everyone, which gives Trump a leg up in terms of viewership and Fox News a leg down.

00:26:57.000 I understand that Fox is trying to grip harder and harder to its declining user base, but I gotta say, this should be relevant information, like fair use, like classic fair use kind of stuff, for conservatives all over the country.

00:27:11.000 For Fox to restrict access to your ability to listen to clips of the debate with commentary, which is the normal way that fair use works.

00:27:18.000 Threatening litigation against everybody else is pretty insane.

00:27:23.000 Okay, meanwhile, we will see whether Trump's ditching of the debate has any impact on him in places like Iowa.

00:27:30.000 Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, who's been a target of Trump's ire, she says that voters do expect Trump to show up and actually be there.

00:27:37.000 Are Iowans kind of giving him a pass from some of those rules?

00:27:41.000 No, I think they still, they expect him to be here.

00:27:43.000 They want to interact.

00:27:44.000 They want to interact with all of the candidates.

00:27:46.000 We've had, we had great turnout at the fair side chats.

00:27:49.000 I had a lot of Iowans and people outside of the state come up and just say, thank you for doing that.

00:27:53.000 It was a great opportunity to hear from the candidates.

00:27:56.000 And so, you know, Iowans take it very seriously.

00:27:58.000 They're very knowledgeable and they want to interact with the candidates.

00:28:03.000 Okay, we will find out whether that is true or not.

00:28:05.000 Meanwhile, Donald Trump is going to counter-program the debate with a pre-taped interview with Tucker Carlson on Twitter.

00:28:11.000 Again, I think we've seen interviews with Donald Trump and Tucker before, so, you know, I don't think it'll be particularly illuminating or fascinating in any way, but it's smart of Tucker and smart of Trump.

00:28:20.000 You gotta give credit where credit is due in terms of the media business.

00:28:24.000 And then meanwhile, he's going to counter-program the aftermath of the debate by getting arrested in Georgia.

00:28:28.000 So he has to turn himself into arrest in Georgia.

00:28:30.000 He had up until the 25th to do it.

00:28:32.000 He's deciding to do it on the 24th, I would assume, in order to counter-program the debate fallout from tonight.

00:28:39.000 Rudy Giuliani was arrested today in Georgia.

00:28:41.000 Rudy, of course, was his lawyer, one of his lawyers, throughout the election debacle and post-election, in which Rudy was making claims about voting machines being hacked and all the rest of this sort of stuff, making accusations about particular Fulton County employees, who he then had to retract those comments so that he wouldn't be sued into the ground.

00:28:59.000 So here is Rudy's Comments upon being arrested.

00:29:02.000 Now, should Rudy be arrested for his failed legal stratagems?

00:29:06.000 It seems to me that many of those failed legal stratagems fall squarely in the realm of free speech.

00:29:09.000 Here was Giuliani.

00:29:12.000 To Georgia, and I'm feeling very, very good about it because I feel like I'm defending the rights of all Americans, as I did so many times as a United States attorney.

00:29:21.000 People like to say I'm different.

00:29:23.000 I'm the same Rudy Giuliani that took down the mafia, that made New York City the safest city in America.

00:29:30.000 Okay, whether or not that is true, the fact is that the counter-programming here is going to be Republicans feeling that Team Trump is victimized.

00:29:46.000 That is the entire shtick here.

00:29:47.000 And it's kind of true.

00:29:50.000 But this is why, again, the case that's going to have to be made on stage by somebody is that Trump is not going to beat Biden.

00:29:56.000 That's the only case any other candidate can make.

00:29:57.000 Now, again, That 2016 says that you don't know.

00:30:02.000 And that's true, you don't know.

00:30:03.000 However, if you're making the case against Donald Trump being electable, Donald Trump losing in 2020 plus four indictments doesn't seem, like, I don't see how Donald Trump electoral results 2020 plus four indictments means that Trump performs wildly better than he did in 2020.

00:30:17.000 You just have to assume that Joe Biden would perform markedly worse than he did in 2020.

00:30:21.000 Okay, well, meanwhile, Trump, as we say, he is going to be showing up for arrest

00:30:29.000 tomorrow.

00:30:29.000 Apparently there's an open betting pool on how much Trump is going to weigh in at.

00:30:33.000 So people are trying to figure out how much Trump weighs.

00:30:36.000 I guess the over-under is in the 270s.

00:30:38.000 I think that's high.

00:30:38.000 I think he's probably in the 240s or 250s.

00:30:40.000 But in any case, Trump is facing some additional legal challenges.

00:30:44.000 According to new filings from special counsel Jack Smith, this will be in the Washington, D.C.

00:30:50.000 case, which, again, is a mischarge.

00:30:53.000 One of Trump's employees, Amara Lago, has now flipped and apparently is testifying against the former president.

00:30:58.000 According to Ryan Sevadra at Daily Wire, the employee identified in court documents as Trump Employee 4 quickly changed his grand jury testimony after meeting with a lawyer from the Federal Defender's Office in Washington, D.C.

00:31:07.000 He said he no longer wanted to be represented by Trump's Political Action Committee, a person who was recommended to him by Trump's lawyer.

00:31:13.000 The revelation was made in a court filing from Smith's team in response to U.S.

00:31:17.000 District Court Judge Eileen Cannon, that is the federal judge overseeing the case.

00:31:20.000 So actually, this is not in the D.C.

00:31:21.000 case.

00:31:21.000 This is the Florida classified documents case, which, again, is a political prosecution, but also is better founded legally than any of the other prosecutions.

00:31:30.000 Apparently, during the investigations, the government gathered evidence that Trump employee Carlos de Oliveira tried to enlist the director of information technology for Mar-a-Lago to delete Mar-a-Lago security footage after the grand jury in the D.C.

00:31:41.000 had issued a subpoena for the footage.

00:31:44.000 The U.S.

00:31:44.000 government approached Stanley Woodward, the lawyer representing Trump Employee No.

00:31:47.000 4, to notify him he had a potential conflict by representing both him and Walt Nauda, that is, the Trump aide accused of obstructing the grand jury investigation.

00:31:54.000 Mr. Woodward responded he'd not have a reason to believe his concurrent representation of Trump Employee 4 and Nauda raised a conflict of interest.

00:32:01.000 When Trump Employee 4 testified before the grand jury in D.C.

00:32:03.000 in March 2023, he repeatedly denied or claimed not to recall any contacts or conversations about security footage.

00:32:09.000 Apparently, the government's evidence indicated that this testimony was false.

00:32:13.000 Prosecutors informed Trump employee he was the target of the grand jury investigation.

00:32:17.000 This guy apparently didn't want to go to jail and so now he is flipping lawyers and he is going to testify that people at Trump's direction were destroying security footage.

00:32:27.000 So again, the most serious case that Trump faces on a legal level is not the George case, it's not the DC case, it's not the New York case, it's actually that Florida case.

00:32:34.000 Meanwhile, Trump's legal team is experiencing a number of setbacks.

00:32:38.000 David Schaffer, former chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, one of the 19 defendants in the Georgia election interference case, is now claiming in court filings he and other Republican electors who tried to certify Trump as the winner in Georgia were acting directly at Trump's behest.

00:32:50.000 So this may signal that, again, more people who are in Trump's orbit are ready to flip on him legally to avoid jail time themselves.

00:32:57.000 Which is one of the things that comes into play when Donald Trump does not pay your legal bills.

00:33:01.000 It turns out that there are a bunch of people, up to and including Jenna Ellis, whose legal bills are not being paid by the former president of the United States.

00:33:08.000 That is a major danger for the former president of the United States.

00:33:12.000 Okay, meanwhile, speaking of legal troubles, Hunter Biden continues to get himself in legal trouble.

00:33:16.000 We'll bring you the latest on that first.

00:33:18.000 You know, everything is very chaotic lately, and this is why you need to commune with the Almighty.

00:33:23.000 It's something that we, in the Jewish faith, we are enjoined to do at least three times a day.

00:33:29.000 It's something that you should be doing on a daily basis, no matter what your religious persuasion.

00:33:33.000 We all need a little more peace in our lives.

00:33:34.000 Hallow is an incredible app that offers a unique approach to prayer and meditation.

00:33:38.000 Unlike the other meditation apps, Hallow is tailored specifically for people of faith to deepen their relationship with God.

00:33:42.000 The Hallow app is filled with studies, meditations, and reflections rooted in Judeo-Christian prayer practices.

00:33:47.000 We have tons of Christians who work in this office, obviously, and they use Hallo regularly.

00:33:51.000 You can pray alongside Mark Wahlberg, Jonathan Rumi, who portrays Jesus in The Chosen, even some world-class athletes.

00:33:56.000 You can access the number one Christian podcast, Bible in a Year, with Father Mike Schmitz on Hallo.

00:34:00.000 With features like progress tracking and streaks, Hallo helps you stay motivated and make prayer a regular part of your daily routine.

00:34:06.000 It's very important stuff.

00:34:07.000 I take time out of my day.

00:34:09.000 Honestly, if I didn't, I think I might go nuts.

00:34:11.000 It's very important for you to do it too.

00:34:12.000 If you're looking to deepen your relationship with God and improve your mental and emotional well-being, try Halo for three months free at Halo.com slash Shapiro.

00:34:18.000 That's Halo.com slash Shapiro.

00:34:20.000 Also, we're hiring here at Daily Wire.

00:34:23.000 We are currently looking for a graphic designer to join our fast-growing creative department as a graphic designer.

00:34:27.000 You're going to collaborate with copywriters, creative directors, and other designers under the guidance of the executive creative director to craft show assets and thumbnails for a variety of mediums, including maybe this show.

00:34:35.000 To excel in this role, you'll need proficiency in Adobe Creative Cloud, experience creating engaging web graphics, keen attention to detail, and excellent communication and collaboration skills.

00:34:44.000 The position is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

00:34:46.000 If you're interested in joining our team, visit dailywire.com slash careers.

00:34:49.000 That's dailywire.com slash careers today.

00:34:52.000 Well, meanwhile, as pretty much the entire world is focused in on the Republicans, the Democrats are doing a terrible job.

00:34:57.000 I mean, Joe Biden is doing a truly awful job, and obviously he's still embroiled with all of the Hunter questions.

00:35:03.000 So over his trip to Maui, the media tried their best to do cleanup.

00:35:07.000 CNN's Bill Weir was Big Biden fan.

00:35:09.000 He suggested that Joe Biden was empathizer in chief, which is weird because typically when I do empathy, I don't go to a place where people watch their relatives burn to death and then talk about that one time there was a kitchen fire in my kitchen.

00:35:19.000 But apparently, according to Bill Weir, Joe Biden is just amazing at this.

00:35:23.000 Locals here, working class native Hawaiians and multi-generational locals are worried of disaster capitalism.

00:35:30.000 People moving in to exploit this and buy up as much land as they can in this paradise and rebuild it for their interests as well.

00:35:38.000 The president says, promises that that won't happen.

00:35:41.000 It remains to be seen.

00:35:42.000 There's a lot of forces at play here right now.

00:35:44.000 He did serve as empathizer-in-chief after five days of being mostly silent on the issue publicly, but the governor said he was working behind the scenes to assure first responders that the feds had their back on this.

00:35:59.000 Old Man Who Can Barely Walk serves as empathizer in chief while telling people about that one time

00:36:04.000 there was a kitchen fire that was put out in 20 minutes.

00:36:06.000 Also, big controversy of the day is whether Joe Biden actually fell asleep at the Maui Wildfire

00:36:12.000 Memorial Service. This would not be the first time that he appeared to nod off in the middle of a

00:36:15.000 service. The media were doing their best to spin this as, no, he was just being solemn. Yeah, I

00:36:20.000 don't know, man. I don't know.

00:36:25.000 We are a community that relies on family, on on Ohana, whether by blood or by friendship.

00:36:35.000 And he wakes himself up.

00:36:36.000 That is sleep breathing.

00:36:37.000 I mean, you can see his chest moving up and down, by the way.

00:36:38.000 That is the deep breathing that you get right when you're in the middle of a REM cycle right

00:36:41.000 there.

00:36:42.000 So, yeah, the chances that Joe Biden was just super solemn right there, as opposed to he

00:36:46.000 briefly nodded off because he's an 80 year old man and he hasn't had his early bird dinner

00:36:50.000 yet and he just took a flight.

00:36:52.000 That don't worry, guys.

00:36:53.000 He's as virile and wonderful and empathetic as ever.

00:36:57.000 He's not the kind of guy who would check his watch repeatedly during a service for fallen Marines or something.

00:37:02.000 He did that when they brought the bodies back from Afghanistan.

00:37:04.000 Meanwhile, the Hunter Biden stuff is not going away.

00:37:06.000 It's going to get worse because Joe Biden has spent literally his entire career enriching his family on the back of his political power.

00:37:12.000 It's a thing he has done his entire career.

00:37:14.000 I'm working on an entire compendium of this stuff right now.

00:37:17.000 It's taking me a long time.

00:37:18.000 I mean, everyone around Joe Biden is richer because Joe Biden was in politics and because, presumably, he was offering favors on their behalf, pretty obviously.

00:37:26.000 That includes his brothers, Frank and Jim.

00:37:27.000 That includes his sister Val.

00:37:29.000 It includes his sons, Hunter and Beau.

00:37:31.000 All of these people have benefited by their very close proximity to the Senator and then VP and then President of the United States.

00:37:37.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.

00:37:40.000 relations with China were steady in December 2013, when then-Vice President Joe Biden stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing with the seemingly unremarkable companion, his son Hunter.

00:37:48.000 Days later, Shanghai authorities approved the formation of an investment boutique underwritten by the Chinese government that named Hunter Biden as a director, and later cut him an ownership share at a discounted price.

00:37:56.000 Roughly four months afterward, he began earning up to $1 million annually for sitting on the Burisma board.

00:38:00.000 The younger Biden's business activities loom larger than ever a decade after that trip, with President Biden seeking reelection as a grinding DOJ investigation and a determined probe by congressional Republicans scrutinized where Hunter Biden made money overseas and what exactly he got paid to do.

00:38:13.000 Now, what's funny is that they say things like, no evidence has emerged to show President Biden benefited from his son's international commercial endeavors.

00:38:19.000 Now, I just, I'm wondering why you would say that.

00:38:23.000 Again, if I do you a favor, and then your favor back to me, is that you give my kids a crap load of money, I benefited.

00:38:30.000 It's my kids.

00:38:32.000 I'm so confused as to the idea that, like, Joe Biden has to personally cash the check in order to benefit from this sort of thing.

00:38:39.000 It's sort of bizarre.

00:38:42.000 Now, Hunter Biden, between 2014 and 2019, companies associated with Hunter Biden cleared $20 million.

00:38:47.000 Hunter Biden personally may have cleared up to $7 million during that time.

00:38:50.000 He is a drug-addicted derelict, one of the worst people in American public life, and he's pulling down Buku Bucks because of his last name.

00:39:00.000 And again, everybody knows this.

00:39:02.000 That's the part that's truly astonishing about this.

00:39:03.000 It's not as though this is a giant secret.

00:39:05.000 Everybody knows this, including members of his own family.

00:39:09.000 I mean, literally, Hunter said that his last name was Gold to foreign investors, admitting that his father's job, quote, opened doors that would not be opened up to other people.

00:39:17.000 Jim used to tell potential business partners, quote, we've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.

00:39:22.000 Frank, Joe's other brother, called the Biden name a tremendous asset for business.

00:39:25.000 Val says, quote, I had a better seat at the table because my brother is at the head of the table.

00:39:28.000 Like he is a he is a penny ante racketeer.

00:39:32.000 Joe Biden for his family has always been this ever since he was in Delaware, which, again, is a small business run state.

00:39:39.000 Meanwhile, we are learning now, thanks to an investigation by Luke Rosiak over at Daily Wire, that Hunter Biden's business partner used the federal position he was handed during the Obama administration to court an Eastern European company whose board Hunter was eager to join, according to a batch of emails obtained by the Daily Wire through a FOIA request.

00:39:54.000 Eric Schwerin was appointed to the Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad by Barack Obama in March 2015.

00:40:00.000 That appointment gave Schwerin, who is managing director of Hunter's now-dissolved firm, the ability to present himself as U.S.

00:40:05.000 official, negotiate with Eastern European countries about the preservation of Holocaust-era cemeteries, and bring money to the table to fund those preservation projects raised from private businesses and individuals.

00:40:14.000 And he attempted to get a Latvian bank acknowledged on a plaque on a commissioned project.

00:40:17.000 During the same month, Hunter was seeking a board seat at that exact same company.

00:40:22.000 Good stuff, as always, from the Joe Biden and Hunter Biden team-up.

00:40:26.000 It's all going just amazing.

00:40:29.000 Meanwhile, the economy continues to be down in the dumps.

00:40:33.000 As I've said before, what goes up must come down.

00:40:35.000 Things are coming down.

00:40:36.000 Both Dick's Sporting Goods and Macy's are flashing warning signs on consumer spending.

00:40:40.000 Basically, consumer spending is the only thing that's been holding up the American economy.

00:40:43.000 A little bit later on in the show, we're going to talk with Mark Skousen, who is an economist who is the creator of a metric known as gross output, which is a much better measure of the economy than gross domestic product.

00:40:52.000 GDP is the thing we always use.

00:40:54.000 GDP is basically just consumption economy.

00:40:56.000 It's like what you buy at the store or what the government spends money on, but it doesn't include business-to-business transactions or business investment, gross output measures, those things.

00:41:03.000 According to Skousen's gross output stat, we've been in negative territory for the last two quarters straight.

00:41:07.000 That stuff is starting to hit home right now.

00:41:09.000 The business investors, they're not investing.

00:41:10.000 They can see that the consumption-led economy is going to start to drop down.

00:41:15.000 Both Dick's Sporting Goods and Macy's shares traded sharply lower on Tuesday after the retailers posted weaker quarterly earnings and provided tepid forecasts for the remainder of the year, signals that the recent strength in consumer spending has its limits.

00:41:27.000 The sporting goods chain slashed its profit targets for the year after missing Wall Street forecasts for the second quarter.

00:41:31.000 Macy's also reported declining sales in the June quarter as well.

00:41:36.000 According to Macy's chief executive Jeff Gannett, we expect the pressures consumers are under

00:41:39.000 continue through the balance of the year. Sales at Macy's were down 8% to $5 billion

00:41:44.000 from one year earlier. Again, this is not a rarity.

00:41:48.000 There are other chains that are experiencing significant difficulties.

00:41:52.000 Walmart is still doing okay.

00:41:53.000 Amazon is still doing okay, but Target is getting whomped.

00:41:57.000 Home Depot is getting whomped.

00:41:59.000 Again, a lot of these sort of retail places where you're not buying online, those places are getting hit hardest because people are spending less money.

00:42:07.000 Meanwhile, they're also having to face down the fact that in major cities, they're getting routinely robbed.

00:42:10.000 According to Axios, retailers are already grappling with an uncertain economy, a shift towards spending on services and rising labor costs.

00:42:16.000 The last thing they need is another threat to the bottom line.

00:42:19.000 Two major chains reported on Tuesday their earnings are suffering from consumers not ponying up.

00:42:25.000 Dick's Sporting Goods said that elevated inventory shrink, meaning theft, is an increasingly serious issue impacting many retailers.

00:42:31.000 Also, Macy's says there are a giant number of delinquencies on their bills.

00:42:36.000 A lot of retailers are now acknowledging that giant amounts of theft are impacting that bottom line.

00:42:42.000 Joe Biden's economy, going strong.

00:42:44.000 It's all going great.

00:42:45.000 It's all going great.

00:42:47.000 Meanwhile, on foreign policy, it is worthwhile noting the war in Ukraine has utterly bogged down, which it was bound to do because nobody has an incentive, given the current incentive structure, to actually figure out a deal.

00:42:57.000 According to the New York Times, a big fan of the war, Ukraine's grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units in the wrong places, according to both American and other Western officials.

00:43:09.000 More Ukrainian forces are near Bakhmut and other cities in the east than they are near Melitopol and Berdyansk in the south.

00:43:15.000 Both far strategically significant fronts.

00:43:18.000 Officials say.

00:43:20.000 So all of these things are bogging down right now.

00:43:22.000 This thing is likely now to go on for years.

00:43:25.000 The West has provided no incentive structure for Zelensky to cut a deal.

00:43:28.000 And they've provided no off-ramp for Putin to cut a deal.

00:43:31.000 Meanwhile, US-China tensions are increasing.

00:43:35.000 As the Chinese economy begins to sink, the consumer economy is going to sink as well.

00:43:40.000 So once again, Joe Biden doing just a spectacular job.

00:43:43.000 Okay, meanwhile, the left's use of lawfare at this point is utterly out of control.

00:43:47.000 I mean, completely out of control.

00:43:49.000 Whether you're talking about the wild indictments being brought by like the Manhattan DA against Donald Trump, or whether you're talking about this latest insanity.

00:43:56.000 The DC Attorney General is apparently now probing Leonard Leo.

00:43:59.000 Okay, so full disclosure, We know Leonard Leo here at the Daily Wire.

00:44:03.000 We think that he's done extraordinary work with regard to federalist society.

00:44:06.000 It is Leonard Leo who is largely responsible for the cultivation of an originalist bench that has allowed for the selection of justices to the Supreme Court.

00:44:15.000 So if you like what Donald Trump picked for the Supreme Court, that's Leonard Leo who actually did it.

00:44:18.000 And well now, Washington D.C.

00:44:19.000 Attorney General Brian Schwalbe is investigating judicial activist Leonard Leo and his network of non-profits, according to a person with direct knowledge of the probe.

00:44:27.000 The scope of the investigation is unclear, but it comes after Politico reported in March that one of Leonard Leo's non-profits, registered as a charity, paid his for-profit company tens of millions of dollars in the two years since he joined the company.

00:44:36.000 A few weeks later, a progressive watchdog group filed a complaint with the D.C.

00:44:39.000 Attorney General and IRS, requesting a probe into what services were provided.

00:44:43.000 Well, I mean, this sort of stuff actually does happen on a fairly regular basis.

00:44:47.000 Of course, it's never applied to, say, the Hillary Clinton Foundation.

00:44:49.000 Whenever you have a non-profit that pays private contractors, like, this happens all the time.

00:44:54.000 Every time you go to a big non-profit event, the non-profit had to pay the caterer, for example.

00:44:59.000 David Rivkin, an attorney for the parties in the investigation, said the complaint is sloppy, deceptive, legally flawed.

00:45:03.000 We're addressing this fully with the D.C.

00:45:04.000 Attorney General's Office.

00:45:06.000 And what this really is about is trying to scare a bunch of conservatives from involving themselves in conservative politics.

00:45:13.000 It's trying to get donors out of the business.

00:45:17.000 Leo grounds few interviews according to Politico.

00:45:18.000 He featured a two-part podcast with main wire conservative news organization.

00:45:22.000 Leo cited his commitment to defend the Constitution as the as the reality of why people are going after him.

00:45:29.000 This of course is largely correct.

00:45:32.000 So now you have the D.C.

00:45:33.000 Attorney General going after Leonard Leo.

00:45:35.000 Politico reported a total of $43 million flowed to Leo's company over two years.

00:45:39.000 The bulk of it came from the 85 Fund, a nonprofit run by his allies, which has spent tens of millions of dollars over the past decade to promote Trump's Supreme Court picks.

00:45:46.000 It's now run by Kerry Severino, another friend of the show, attorney and former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.

00:45:53.000 So, things that I hate.

00:45:53.000 So, the Anti-Defamation League is now defending Bradley Cooper's use of a prosthetic nose.

00:45:57.000 because this really, really looks like going after political enemies by the D.C. Attorney General,

00:46:02.000 which would not be a surprise at all.

00:46:03.000 Okay, we're gonna skip some things I like and go straight to some things that I hate today.

00:46:06.000 So, things that I hate.

00:46:12.000 So, the Anti-Defamation League is now defending Bradley Cooper's use of a prosthetic nose,

00:46:19.000 which in a portrayal of Leonard Bernstein.

00:46:23.000 Of course it's acceptable.

00:46:25.000 Why was this even a controversy?

00:46:26.000 I'm so confused.

00:46:28.000 Following the film's first trailer release on August 15th, according to the UK Independent, the 48-year-old actor, who is not of Jewish descent, caused a stir online as he was accused of fueling anti-Semitic stereotypes.

00:46:38.000 The ADL, however, says, That seems like a reasonable response, shockingly, from the Anti-Defamation League.

00:46:41.000 films and propaganda as evil caricatures with large hooked noses. This film, a biopic of

00:46:45.000 Leonard Bernstein, is not that. That seems like a reasonable response, shockingly, from the

00:46:49.000 Anti-Defamation League. Well, I mean, duh. He put on makeup to look like Leonard Bernstein.

00:46:57.000 I'm confused.

00:46:57.000 Does he look more like Leonard Bernstein or less like Leonard Bernstein?

00:47:02.000 But apparently, we're supposed to, like... So, Bradley Cooper's supposed to look like Bradley Cooper, but we're supposed to believe that he's Leonard Bernstein.

00:47:08.000 Okay, let me just put it this way.

00:47:09.000 Leonard Bernstein and Bradley Cooper do not look alike unless Bradley Cooper wears a lot of makeup.

00:47:14.000 They don't look virtually anything alike.

00:47:16.000 Their noses, in particular, are wildly dissimilar.

00:47:20.000 So, I'm... Bernstein's family, by the way, totally fine with it, as they should be.

00:47:25.000 I'm super confused as to why this was ever an issue, except that we live in the stupidest time in which we are supposed to pretend offensive things that are inoffensive.

00:47:34.000 So just to point out the same people, by the way, who I'm sure are very upset about Bradley Cooper in Jew Face are perfectly fine with the funding of Hamas to murder Jews in Israel.

00:47:43.000 I think the Venn diagram there is just a circle.

00:47:46.000 So being offended by things that are not anti-semitism in order to, at the same time, excuse things that are clearly anti-semitism seems to be one of the hot topics of the day.

00:47:54.000 If you are deeply offended by Bradley Cooper wearing a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein to look more like Leonard Bernstein, I don't have to tell you, you're a dummy.

00:48:03.000 Like, that's really stupid.

00:48:05.000 It's really, really stupid.

00:48:06.000 Again, but I will say, this should force the left into some sort of soul-searching, you would think.

00:48:13.000 About what it means when people play people of other ethnicities but do so in a way that's meant to be flattering and not offensive.

00:48:19.000 I know that we now live in a stupid world in which we are supposed to treat every form of dressing up as equivalent.

00:48:24.000 Megyn Kelly was fired from CBS for the great crime of suggesting that dressing up for Michael Jackson for Halloween is not the same thing as wearing black lace in 1930 and doing an Amos and Andy routine.

00:48:34.000 Which is clearly true.

00:48:36.000 But the left will never acknowledge that.

00:48:39.000 That if you dress up as somebody because you actually think that person is worthy of emulation, that is not the same thing as dressing up as Steppenfetchit.

00:48:47.000 Again, very, very stupid time.

00:48:49.000 Bradley Cooper, it's obviously acceptable.

00:48:51.000 And by the way, Helen Mirren playing Golda Meir, also not offensive in any way, shape, or form.

00:48:58.000 It's all stupid, man.

00:48:58.000 Everything is stupid.

00:49:00.000 We have to pretend offensive things that are clearly inoffensive.

00:49:02.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.

00:49:03.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:49:04.000 Will you join on the line?

00:49:05.000 I'm Mark Skousen.

00:49:06.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:49:07.000 Use code SHPIRO.

00:49:07.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 23, 2023

It’s FIGHT NIGHT!

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